Access control lists (ACLs) are a well known way of controlling access to protected resources, such as documents. For example, a number of known systems and applications allow restrictions to be placed on how a document can be viewed, printed, modified, or forwarded. Typically, an ACL contains information about which users or groups of users have access to a resource and what level of access each has been granted.
Known systems generally provide two types of ACLs: system or predefined ACLs; and custom or user-defined ACLs. System ACLs are often made available to all users of the system and are typically owned by the system's administrator. Custom or user-defined ACLs are created and owned by a user in the system.
Unfortunately, known systems have difficulty in managing the system ACLs in conjunction with custom ACLs. Users often require the ability to create their own custom ACLs since the rights to a particular resource can vary widely. However, for various security reasons, known systems and applications do not allow a user to access other custom ACLs that were created by different users. For example, known systems generally restrict a user from accessing other custom ACLs in order to prevent that user from intentionally or inadvertently granting improper access to a resource or item. Therefore, users must create their custom ACL from scratch.
As the number of users and resources increases, the complexity of managing custom ACLs grows tremendously. This eventually may consume a large amount of system resources or degrade its performance.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide methods and systems that allow for the flexible ownership and use of ACLs.